Business Beyond Time Zones

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Fast Company features a short article on the challenges of managing global teams. This is a real challenge that global Web teams face. Conference calls must be shuffled constantly to adjust for changing schedules and to give people in certain time zones a break from late-night calls.

And then there’s the challenge of managing across cultures. Here’s a very interesting exerpt:

Francisco D’Souza, COO of Cognizant, makes it a rule that new hires must have lived outside their own cultures. His newest 10 employees, for example, are fresh graduates from a dozen U.S. universities, who represent five nationalities. They’ll spend a year in India before spreading across the world. The move has another purpose. “Our team in India gets exposure to different cultures,” D’Souza says.